After I finished Assassin’s Creed IV, I was looking for a new game to play. I’ve played all the Mass Effect games, but always as the stock male Shepard. I’ve been told that playing as a FemShep (female Shepard) opens up new dialogs, and the “sex” scenes may be different, etc. So I decided to give it a shot and have been having great fun!
I played Mass Effect when it came out last decade. I’d forgotten most of it, but I remember it being a fun experience. While the graphics are quite dated, it still looks pretty good (except for the prehistoric textures – BioWare seems to have a problem with textures in the Mass Effect and Dragon Age games: the figures are modelled perfectly, but they wear very lo-res, jagged textures). The gameplay is good, and I chose to be an “Operative” so using pistols, sniper rifles, and tech, but no biotic powers.
I’ve been busy doing all the side missions, so haven’t progressed too far into the plot missions, but it is still very compelling. I even like the bouncy planetary rover missions a lot better than the terrible scanning mechanic of ME2.
I owned Mass Effect well before EA’s Origin existed. Origin discovered my other ME and Dragon Age games, but didn’t have a clue about the original Mass Effect. I tried entering the key, even tried installing the game so it could find it. Nothing worked until I tried again a few months ago, and suddenly Origin agreed that I own ME and would let me install it via download. So despite all our hatred for EA, they are improving things, and I’m thankful I can get rid of the case and DVD now.
So if you have Mass Effect laying around, get it into Origin, and give it a go if you get bored. It’s still a great game.